Perturbed N-glycosylation of Halobacterium salinarum archaellum filaments leads to filament bundling and compromised cell motility

Autor: Shahar Sofer, Zlata Vershinin, Leen Mashni, Ran Zalk, Anat Shahar, Jerry Eichler, Iris Grossman-Haham
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Zdroj: Nature Communications, Vol 15, Iss 1, Pp 1-13 (2024)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2041-1723
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-50277-1
Popis: Abstract The swimming device of archaea—the archaellum—presents asparagine (N)-linked glycans. While N-glycosylation serves numerous roles in archaea, including enabling their survival in extreme environments, how this post-translational modification contributes to cell motility remains under-explored. Here, we report the cryo-EM structure of archaellum filaments from the haloarchaeon Halobacterium salinarum, where archaellins, the building blocks of the archaellum, are N-glycosylated, and the N-glycosylation pathway is well-resolved. We further determined structures of archaellum filaments from two N-glycosylation mutant strains that generate truncated glycans and analyzed their motility. While cells from the parent strain exhibited unidirectional motility, the N-glycosylation mutant strain cells swam in ever-changing directions within a limited area. Although these mutant strain cells presented archaellum filaments that were highly similar in architecture to those of the parent strain, N-linked glycan truncation greatly affected interactions between archaellum filaments, leading to dramatic clustering of both isolated and cell-attached filaments. We propose that the N-linked tetrasaccharides decorating archaellins act as physical spacers that minimize the archaellum filament aggregation that limits cell motility.
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